Drugging a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse
Play Sample
IN AN OPIUM DEN, SHANGHAI
OPIUM SMOKING
So at Shanghai the Chinese warfare on the “foreign smoke” was waged earnestly and effectively in the native city.The Chinese authorities closed the dens—permanently, it seems fair to believe. And the only result of their heroic action,—and it is an heroic action to suppress a prosperous and thoroughly established branch of commerce in any city,—the only result was that the opium business went over to the adjoining city of the foreigners, who gladly accepted it, and took the money which had formerly been spent in the native city. The foreigners live wholly outside of and above Chinese law. They have their own strips of land, their own courts, their own local government, all guaranteed to them by the treaties which China has, at one time or another, been forced to sign. When the Chinese first proposed to stamp out opium, these foreigners laughed, and talked about the chronic insincerity of the Chinese government. When the yellow men did stamp out opium in that native city a mile or so away, these foreigners said that it would not be fair to the holders of licenses to close down in the settlement. As I have had occasion to say before, the Chinese are not fools. They grasped the significance of the situation, and spoke out frankly. The local mandarins protested to the settlement council. The native newspapers called attention to it. And all this clear insight into an extraordinary situation and the frank comment on it were communicated, by the routes and the means which I have described earlier in this chapter, to the fifty or seventy-five million Chinese who are directly influenced by conditions at Shanghai. Now, in the light of these facts, in the light of what they see and know, it is time to ask, and to ask with feeling—How can you hope to make those fifty to seventy-five million Chinamen believe that our civilization, with its science, and its whisky, and its keen grasp on “revenue,” and its contradictory and confusing teachings of Christianity, is superior to their civilization? And if they do not believe that our civilization is superior, how long do you suppose they will endure the treatment they receive from us? As time rolls on, there will be more “Boxer” uprisings in China, more crazy and disastrous protests against foreign domination and exploitation. When these troubles come, it will be well to recall that Shanghai,—not the individual inhabitants, but the government of that little “settlement” of foreigners which lies upon the west bank of the Woosung River,—officially and for profit maintained its traffic in the drug that is China’s curse after the Chinese had stopped their own opium traffic. It will be well to recall it, because it is quite certain that the Chinese themselves will not have forgotten it.
I have gone thus at length into the deplorable example which Shanghai, the most important foreign settlement in China, exhibits to the struggling, opium-ridden yellow men, because it is typical of the whole course of the foreigner in China.In the next chapter we shall consider further evidence in looking into the conditions of life and of the opium problem at Hongkong and Tientsin.It is of course peculiarly unfortunate that Shanghai, when the great opportunity came to extend a helping hand to China in the opium fight, should have failed, utterly, ignominiously.But the slightest acquaintance with the place is enough to make it plain that Shanghai, as it has been and still is, is not likely to extend a helping hand to anybody.The helping hand is not exactly what Shanghai stands for.It really stands for the domination of the great Yangtse Valley, for the exploitation of China, and, incidentally, for a sort of snug harbour for criminals and degenerates.There can be no doubt that the fifty to seventy-five millions of Chinese who come directly within the radiating influence of Shanghai know this perfectly well. It is also quite likely that these and the few hundred other millions who make up “the Middle Kingdom” know perfectly well, that the complicated commercial establishments of all the various foreign nations in China stand for similar principles. And they doubtless know further that the very important and very cynical gentlemen who represent the great and prosperous foreign powers at Peking, are there for no other purpose than diplomatically to put on the pressure whenever China chances to block a move or gain a piece in this sordid and unholy game of chess. So perhaps we had better give up, once and for all, any serious consideration of the charges made by certain foreign powers that China is insincere in her warfare on opium. Such charges and insinuations, coming from such sources, hardly command respect.
It is plain that this greedy exploitation, going so far as even to snatch a profit out of the opium struggle, is not a healthy basis of intercourse between great nations.If the Chinese were a Congo tribe, or a race of American Indians, this policy might pay commercially; for in that case it would be a matter for the Christian nations of simply killing off the Chinese or driving them off the land, and then of fighting among themselves over the division of the spoils. But this policy, which succeeds against weak and numerically small nations, will hardly succeed in China. Driving four hundred million Chinese off the land would be a large order, a very different thing, indeed, from wiping out a tribe of “Fuzzy Wuzzys” with machine guns. All of the military observers with whom I have talked in China show a tendency to grow thoughtful over the subject of China’s potential military strength. From the days of the T’ai Ping Rebellion and “Chinese” Gordon’s “ever victorious” army, down to the review of 30,000 of Yuan Shi K’ai’s troops, with modern weapons and modern drill, in Honan Province in the summer of 1906, it has been plain that the Chinese make splendid soldiers when properly led. And yet it seems to have occurred to few white statesmen that the deepest interests of trade itself, sordid trade, demand that China be treated fairly and that the relations between China and the powers be established on a basis that makes for mutual respect and for peace, rather than on a basis that makes for exploitation, outrage, massacre, warfare, “indemnity,” and smouldering hate. John Hay saw over the balance-sheet, when he established the “open door” policy. Elihu Root has seen over the balance-sheet in arranging to waive the future claims of this country for indemnity money. And Lord Elgin, for England, saw over the balance-sheet when he outlined that sound policy which he was afterwards one of the first to violate—“Never to make an unjust demand of China, and never to recede from a demand once made.” To-day it seems apparent that the great nations cannot be brought together to agree on any really enlightened policy in China. Even had such a thing been possible a few years ago, the untrustworthy methods of Russia and the growing ambitions of Japan would make it impossible to-day. Nations which, when brought together in a “Peace Conference,” cannot even agree upon the rules of war, will hardly forego the chance of seizing some special advantage in the colossal grab-bag which is China. And so it seems likely that the genial commercial adventurers and gamblers and vice promoters of Shanghai will go on sowing the wind in China—and that the sullen hate of those silent, observing millions of yellow men will deepen and smoulder until the final day of reckoning, the day of reaping, shall come.
There is one ray of light which, to-day, illuminates the China Coast.It is a small ray, when we consider the number of dark corners to be illuminated, and yet there is the bare possibility that it may prove the beginning of better conditions.Somewhat less than two years ago the United States government established a wholly new institution, the United States Court for China.L.R.Wilfley, one of the legal officers whom Judge Taft had trained in Manila during his governorship of the Philippines, was appointed the first judge of this court, and was sent out, with a district attorney, a marshal, and a clerk, to administer justice to Americans up and down the China Coast and along the Yangtse River.By treaty, all American citizens are exempt from judgment under the Chinese law, that peculiar jumble of tradition, superstition, common sense, and Oriental severity.Formerly, justice had been dealt out in courts presided over by the consul-generals and the consuls in their respective districts.
Now it should be obvious to the most casual observer that the peculiar conditions and the peculiar industries which thrive in the treaty ports give rise to a considerable number of legal entanglements.There is, of course, a large volume of legitimate business transacted on the Coast, which gives legitimate employment to a few lawyers; but there is a volume of illegitimate and semi-legitimate business which would also naturally give employment to other lawyers.At the time of Judge Wilfley’s appointment one thing was clear to the enlightened heads of our Department of State at Washington; the consular courts, thanks to the skill and resource of the American lawyer on the Coast, were in a constant tangle of perplexed inefficiency, and the American name was sinking steadily lower in China.
It is likely that no American judge ever faced so peculiar and difficult a task as that assigned to Judge Wilfley.It was his duty to take the place of a lacking public opinion, and to raise the drooping prestige of his country.He had behind him no settled code of laws, but merely a few treaties and a few orders from the Department of State.He had not only to judge cases between Americans, but also cases between Americans and citizens of other nationalities, including the Chinese themselves. He had to establish rulings on the most complicated matters of coastwise commerce, in a land where coastwise commerce is involved with perplexing local customs and superstitions. Above all, he had, from the start, to fight a well-organized, well-entrenched band of shady characters who had run their course for so long without anything in the nature of a public opinion to hold them in check that they resented his advent as an encroachment on their vested right to do as they chose. The last and most perplexing of his problems was that in rooting out these evils he was in danger at every turn of arraying against him the citizens of other nationalities and even of arousing the active enmity of the courts and the officials of other nations, most of whom had been content to let Shanghai jog along in its easy-going, sordid way.
It is to Judge Wilfley’s everlasting credit that, with a full knowledge of the difficulties and dangers before him, he went straight to the heart of the problem.Seeing that certain American lawyers had long stood between the old consular courts and anything which could be called justice, he set to work first to solve the problem of the lawyers. His campaign for a higher standard on the Coast has not been without its humorous moments. Mr. Bassett, his shrewd young district attorney, preceded him to Shanghai to “look the ground over.” The little group of American lawyers at Shanghai made haste to get acquainted with him. One of the ablest among them invited him, casually and informally, to dinner. When Bassett arrived at the dinner he found himself, to his astonishment, confronted with thirty or forty “leading citizens,” including all the American lawyers and several men of questionable business character whom he rather expected to be prosecuting a little later on.
After the coffee and cigars, the host rose, and in a neat little speech called on Bassett to tell the company something about Judge Wilfley and what work he meant to do in Shanghai.It was a difficult situation.A slow-witted man might have found himself in a fix.But Bassett, if I may credit the account which reached me, was equal to the situation.He rose, and looked around the table from face to face.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “as I have come unprepared for this pleasure, I shall have to fall back on story-telling. In the small hours, one morning, two men who had been having rather too good a time were navigating from street corner to street corner. Said Smith, ‘Jonesh, shtime to go home. Shgetting broad daylight. Theresh sun shining up there.’
“‘No, Shmith,’ replied Jones, ‘you’re mistaken.Tha’sh moon up there, and it’s night.’They staggered down the street, Smith insisting that it was day, Jones insisting that it was night, until they met a fellow inebriate clinging to a fire plug.To him they appealed their dispute.He heard them out, and then looked thoughtfully up at the moon.For a long time he puzzled over the problem, and finally, giving it up, turned to them and said politely, ‘Gentlemen, you’ll have to ’scuse me.I’m a stranger in town.’
“And, gentlemen,” said Bassett, again looking about from face to face, “you’ll have to excuse me.I’m a stranger in town.”
Judge Wilfley began by calling upon every American lawyer who was practicing in Shanghai to bring a certificate of good moral character and to pass an examination before he could be admitted to practice in the new court. The examination was given, and only two of the lawyers passed.At once there was a hubbub.The judge was attacked hotly.One of the lawyers who failed to pass hurried over to this country, making a speech at Honolulu, on the way, in which he insinuated charges of corruption against Judge Wilfley.Shortly after his arrival at San Francisco, he prevailed upon the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on the Pacific Coast, to reverse one of Judge Wilfley’s decisions without having the facts of the whole case in hand and without a hearing from the China court.He went on to Washington, and within a month or two last winter actually got a bill through the United States Senate reinstating all the disqualified lawyers.The bill is before the House at this present session.He has conducted a newspaper campaign against Judge Wilfley in this country since his return last year.It seems only fair to call attention to these facts on a fearless and able man, because Judge Wilfley is too hard at work in a distant country to be able to defend himself.In the course of my travels from port to port last year, it became clear to me that this new court was the one uplifting factor in a distressing general condition.
Judge Wilfley, like his district attorney, seems to hold no visionary theories, in spite of the high standard he has set.Before leaving China, I made it a point to call on him and talk with him about the work he is doing in the interest of the American name.He seemed to recognize clearly enough that vice and depravity can no more be put down out of hand in Shanghai than they can be put down out of hand in New York or Chicago or Boston.But he maintained that the disreputably open flaunting of vice can be stopped.In fining the “American girls” $500 (gold) each, and driving a number of them off the Coast, his attack has been directed mainly against the dishonourable use of an honourable phrase.In imprisoning or driving away the American gamblers, he has been trying to put gambling down more nearly to the place it occupies, in this country, as a minor rather than as a major branch of industry.Judge Wilfley has undertaken an Herculean task.It seems to be the hope of all that patient minority, the better class of Americans on the China Coast, that he will be permitted to continue his fight unhampered by political machinery “back home.”
There are two other points, besides Shanghai, at which the two kinds of civilization, Western and Eastern, come into contact—Hongkong and Tientsin. Each is different from the other as well as from Shanghai; and each plays a curious part in the opium drama. We shall take them up in the next chapter.
VI
SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA—TIENTSIN AND HONGKONG
If you could avoid the suburbs of mud huts and walled compounds, and step directly down from an airship on the broad piazza of the Astor House at Tientsin (no treaty port is complete without its Astor House), you might also imagine yourself in a thriving English town. Set about this piazza are round tables, in bowers of potted plants, where sit Britishers, Germans, and Americans, with a gay sprinkling of soldiery. Across the street there is a green little park, where plump British babies are wheeled about and children romp among the shrubbery, and where the Sikh band plays on Sundays. There is nothing, unless it be the group of rickshaw coolies at the curb, or the fat Chinese policeman in the roadway, to recall China to the mind.
Yet Tientsin dominates all Northern China much as Shanghai dominates the mighty valley of the Yangtse.The railways and waterways (including the Grand Canal) all lead to Tientsin. It is Peking’s seaport. The viceroy of the Northern Provinces makes it his seat of government. The chief point of contact between these Northern Provinces and Western civilization, it is through Tientsin that the new ideas which are stirring the sluggish Chinese mind to new desires and to a new purpose filter into one hundred million Mongoloid heads.
The foreign settlement is simply a polyglot cluster of nationalities, each with its “concession” or allotment of land wrung from a browbeaten empire, each with its separate municipal government ruled by its own consul-general, and the whole combined, for purposes of defense and aggression, into a loosely knit city of seven or eight thousand whites under the general direction of a dozen consulates.The British have their polo, golf, and racing grounds; the French have their wealthy church orders and their Parisian moving pictures; the Germans have their beer halls and delicatessen shops.The Japanese, the Russians, the Italians, the Austrians, all the powers, in fact, excepting the United States—which holds no land in China—contribute their lesser shares to the colour and the activity of this extraordinary place.And only a mile or two away, further up the crooked river, lies the huge, sprawling Chinese city, where nine hundred and fifty thousand blue-clad celestials—nearly a round million of them—ceaselessly watch the squabbling groups of foreigners, and by means of newspapers, travelling merchants, and the thousand and one other instruments for the spreading of gossip, tell all Northern China what they see.
Tientsin, then, like Shanghai, is a potent, an electric, force in its influence on China.Whatever the Chinese are to become in their struggle towards the light of day will be in some measure due to the example set by these two cities, the only samples of Western civilization which the Chinaman can scrutinize at close range.The missionary tells him of the God of the Western peoples, and of how His Spirit regenerates humankind; the Chinaman listens stolidly, and then turns to look at the samples of regenerated peoples that fringe his Coast.What he actually sees will stick in his mind long after what he merely hears shall have passed out at the other ear.And these impressions that stick in the Chinaman’s mind are precisely the highly charged forces that are revolutionizing China to-day.
While still at Peking, I had picked up more or less gossip which seemed to indicate that the Tientsin foreign concessions were setting an unfortunate example in the matter of opium. In several of the concessions there are thousands of Chinese traders who have crowded in the white man’s territory, in order to make a living. These Chinese districts demand their opium, and they have always been allowed to have it. The opium shops and dens are licensed, as are our saloons, and the resulting revenue is cheerfully accepted by the various municipalities. When the Chinese officials set out to fight opium last winter and spring, they asked the foreign consuls to cooperate with them. This could be no more than a friendly request, for the concessions are foreign soil, that have passed wholly out of China’s control; but it was obviously of no use to close the dens of the native city if smokers could continue to gratify their desire by simply walking down the road.
This request bothered the consuls.The Chinese had adroitly placed them in a difficult position.A failure to cooperate would look bad; but revenue is revenue, on the Chinese Coast as elsewhere.More, if they could play for time, the enforcement in the native city, by driving the smokers over into the concessions, would actually increase the revenue. So the consuls played for time. They spread the impression “back home” that they were going to close the dens. When? Oh, soon—very soon. There were matters of detail to attend to. The licenses must run out. Then, too, perhaps the Chinese proposals were “insincere”—a little time would show.
The British concession boasted proudly that it had no opium dens.This was true.The concession is wholly taken up with British shops and British homes, and there is no room for Chinese residents.The German concession had so few natives that it closed some of its dens and took what credit it could.The Japanese quietly put on the lid.But all the other concessions remained “wide open.”
So ran the Peking gossip.It seemed to me worth while to follow it up; for if it should prove true that the concessions were actually profiting, like Shanghai, by the native prohibition, that fact would be significant.It would leave little to say for the representatives of foreign civilization in China.
There was a particular reason why the prohibition should be made effective in and about Tientsin.The one official who stood before his country and the world as the anti-opium leader, who personified, in fact, the reform spirit which is leavening the Chinese mass, was Yuan Shi K’ai, the Northern viceroy.Tientsin was his viceregal capital.Before he could hope to convince the cynical observers of Britain and Europe that the anti-opium crusade was really on, he had to make good in his own city.
Yuan Shi K’ai is a remarkable man.Unlike some of his colleagues who have travelled and studied abroad, he has never, I believe, been over the sea; yet no Chinese official shows a firmer grasp on his biggest and most bewildering of the world’s governmental problems. Practically a self-made man (his father was a soldier), he worked up from rank to rank, himself a part and a product of the antiquated absolutism of his country, until he emerged at the top, a red-button mandarin, a viceroy, with a personality towering above the superstitious, tradition-ridden court, and yet sufficiently able and skillful to work with and through that court.We have seen, in an earlier chapter, how Yuan, then a governor, kept Shantung Province quiet during the Boxer outbreak. It is he who is building up the “new army” with the aid of German and Japanese drill-masters. It is he who succeeded in introducing the study of modern science into the education of the official classes. He is committed to the abolition of the palace eunuch system. He has, during the past year, made great headway with his bold plan to remodel this land of fossilized ideas into a constitutional monarchy, with a representative parliament. But first, and above all else, he places the opium reforms. Unless this curse can be checked, and at least partially removed, there is no hope of progress.
Throughout this magnificent struggle for a new China, Viceroy Yuan has radically opposed the very spirit and genius of his race; but far from ostracizing himself or splitting the government, he has grown steadily in power and influence, until now, as a sort of prime minister, he appears to hold the substance of imperial authority in his hands.Try to imagine a self-made, reform politician outwitting and beating down the traditions of Tammany Hall in New York City, multiply his difficulties by a thousand or two, and you will perhaps have some notion of the sheer ability of this great man, who has risen above the traditions, even above the age-old prejudices of his own people. There are many Europeans in his retinue—physicians, military men, engineers, educators—all of whom apparently look up to him as a genuine superior. An attaché summed up for me this feeling which Yuan inspires in those who know him: “You forget to think of him as a Chinaman,” said this attaché, “as in any way different from the rest of us.”
The viceroy took a personal hand in the Tientsin situation.On December 2, 1906, he issues the following document to the North and South Police Commissioners of Tientsin native city.Rather than altar the quaint wording, I quote just as it was translated for me:
“I have just received instructions from the cabinet ministers enjoining me to act according to the regulations which they presented to the throne, and which received their Majesties’ consent.The evil effects of opium are known to all.It is the duty of us all to act according to the regulations, and do our utmost to get rid of them.
“The North and South police commissioners are authorized to close the opium dens, which have been the refuge of idle hands and young people who are not allowed to smoke at home. The said dens are to be closed at the end of the Tenth Moon (December 14th), at the same time notifying the keepers of restaurants and wine shops not to have opium-smoking instruments or opium prepared for their customers, nor are their customers allowed to take opium and smoke there.
“As to the concessions, the Customs Taotai is authorized to open conference with the different consuls, asking them to close the opium dens within a limited time.”
The two police commissioners at once made the proclamation public; and, as is evident from the following “Reply to a petition,” met with difficulties in enforcing it:
“It is impossible to change the date of closing dens.What is said in the petition, that the keepers cannot square their accounts with their customers, may be true, but the viceroy’s order must be obeyed.The dens shall be closed at the specified time.”
These orders were carried out.It is one of the advantages of a patriarchal form of government that orders can be carried out.There were no injunctions, no writs to show cause, no technical appeals. The few den keepers who dared to violate the prohibition were mildly punished on the first offense—most of them receiving two full weeks at hard labour. The real responsibility was placed upon the owners of the property rented out to the den keepers. It was recognized that these owners were the ones who really profited by the vice. They were given an opportunity to report any violations occurring on their property; but if a violation occurred, and the owner failed to report, his property was promptly confiscated. Here we see successfully employed a method which we in this country have been unable as yet to put into effect. The futility of punishing engineers and switchmen for the sins of railroad corporations, of punishing clerks for the offenses of bank directors, of punishing keepers of disorderly houses in cases where we know that the real profit goes, in the form of a high rental, to the respectable owner of the property, has long been recognized among us. In China, while we see much that seems intolerable in the enforcement of law, we must admit that it is refreshing to find laws really enforced, and to see responsibility sometimes put where it belongs. We of the United States are far ahead of the Chinese in all that goes to make up what we call civilization. But we have, among others, a law forbidding the sale of liquor on Sundays in New York City. We couldn’t enforce the law if we tried; and we haven’t enough moral courage to strike it off the books for the dead letter it is.
Yes, the Tientsin situation has its refreshing side.Yuan Shi K’ai—a Chinaman,—set about it to close the opium dens that supplied this swarming cityful of Chinamen, and succeeded.He solved that most difficult problem which confronts human governments everywhere—in every climate, under every sky—the problem of moral regulation.He drove the manufacturers of opium and of opium accessories out of business.He cut his way through a tangle of “interests,” vested and otherwise, not so different in their essence from the liquor interests of this country.Thanks to his own character and resource, thanks to the cheerful directness of Chinese methods of governing (when directness and not indirectness is really wanted), he “got results.”And not only in Tientsin native city, but also in Peking, and Pao-ting-fu, and all Chili Province, and throughout Shansi Province, and over large portions of Shantung, Shansi, and Manchuria. It was not a case of Maine prohibition, or Kansas prohibition, or New York excise regulation. He closed the dens!
While he was accomplishing this result, and while the native Chamber of Commerce was appropriating a sum of money to found a hospital for the cure of opium victims, the “Customs Taotai,” obeying the viceroy’s instructions, courteously requested the consuls, as rulers of the foreign city, to help along by closing the dens in their municipalities.It was mainly to see whether or not the consuls were “helping” that I went down to Tientsin.There was no need to ask questions or to burrow among statistics.The opium dens of the concessions were either or they were not.Accordingly, I set out from the Astor House at nine o’clock one evening, by rickshaw.For interpreter I had Mr. Sung, the secretary of the Native Young Men’s Christian Association, and with us went a young Englishman who spoke the language.This test seemed a fair one to apply, for it was April 23d, nearly five months after Viceroy Yuan’s proclamation, and several weeks after the closing of the last dens in the native city.
We began with the French concession; and our first glimpses of the thriving opium business of the little municipality astonished us.The Taiku Road, the main street, where one finds churches, mission compounds, offices, and shops, displayed a row of red lights.Our three rickshaws pulled up at the first and we went in.
An opium den usually takes up one floor of a building.Against the walls is a continuous wooden platform, perhaps two feet high and extending over seven or eight feet into the room.This platform is divided at intervals of five or six feet by low partitions, sometimes but a few inches in height, into compartments, each of which accommodates two smokers, with one lamp between them.Sometimes a rug or a bit of matting is laid on this hard couch, sometimes not; for the Chinaman, accustomed to sleeping on bricks, prefers his couches hard.A man always lies down to smoke opium; for the porous pill, which is pressed into the tiny orifice of the pipe, cannot be ignited, but is held directly over the lamp and the flame drawn up through it.
The first den we entered was on the second floor of a rickety building.We climbed the steep, infinitely dirty stairway, crossed a narrow hall, and opened a door. At first I found it difficult to see distinctly in the dim light and through the thick blue haze; and the overpowering, sickish fumes of the drug got into my nose and throat and made breathing a noticeable effort. There was a desk by the door, behind which sat the keeper of the den, with a litter of pipes and thimble-like cups before him. In a corner of the desk was a jar of opium, a thick, sticky substance, dark brown in colour, in appearance not unlike molasses in January. There were twenty smokers on the couches, some preparing the pellet of opium by kneading it and pressing it on the pipe-bowl, some dozing off the fumes, and a few smoking. An attendant moved about the room with fresh supplies of the drug. For each thimbleful, enough for one or two smokes, the price was fifteen cents (Mexican).
The smokers seemed to be mainly of the lower classes; though hardly so low as coolies, who are lucky to earn as much as fifteen cents in a day.It was evident to both of my companions, from the appearance of these men and from their talk, that they could ill afford the luxury.The number of smokes indulged in seemed to range from three or four up to an indefinite number. The youngest and healthiest appearing man in the room told us that after three pipes he could go home and go to sleep in comfort. He had been at it less than a year, he said; and, judging from the expression of peaceful content that came over his face as he held the pipe-bowl over the lamp and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, he had not yet begun to feel the ravages of the drug.
The next den we entered was small, crowded, and dirty.The price was only ten cents.But the third den was the largest and decidedly the most interesting of any that we saw.Like the others, it was situated in a prosperous section of the Taiku Road, with its red light conspicuously displayed over the door.From the facts that it was frankly open for business and that not the slightest concern was shown at our entrance, it seemed fair to believe that the keepers had no fear whatever of publicity or of the law.Even when we announced ourselves to be investigators, our questions were answered cheerfully and fully, and the man who escorted us from room to room was apparently proud of the establishment.The couches were not all occupied, but I counted thirty-five men sitting or reclining on them. One man had a child with him, a girl of some six or eight years of age, and when he had prepared his pipe and smoked it he permitted her to take a whiff or two. In a rear room we saw four women smoking with the men. The price of a smoke in this den was twenty-five cents.
I do not know how many opium dens were open for business in the French concession on this particular April 23d, 1907, but of those that were open I personally either entered or at least saw fifteen or sixteen, and that without attempting anything in the nature of an exhaustive search.In the Italian and Russian concessions I found about sixty dens open, mostly of a very low grade.But the worst of the concessions, in this regard, was the Austrian.Lying nearest to the native city, it had profited more largely than any of the others by the native prohibition.It seemed also to have the largest Chinese population; indeed, in appearance it was more like the quaint old Chinese city than any of the other foreign municipalities.
We entered only three of the Austrian dens.But we saw the signs and glanced in through the doorways of so many others that I was quite ready to accept Mr. Sung’s rough estimate of the total number within the narrow confines of the concession: he put it at fifty to one hundred. It is difficult to be exact in these estimates, because where laws are so languidly enforced the official returns hardly begin to state the full number of flourishing establishments. These three dens which we entered were enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the mind of one traveller. I have eaten and slept in native hostelries, in the interior, so unspeakably dirty and insanitary that to describe them in these pages would exceed all bounds of taste, but I have never been in a filthier place than at least one of these Austrian dens. And the other two were little better. It would require some means more adequate than pen, ink, and paper, to convey to the reader an accurate notion of the mingled, half-blended odours which seemed to underlie, or to form a background for, the overpowering fumes of what passed here for opium. What this drug compound was I really do not know; but it was sold at the rate of two pipes for three cents, Mexican, equivalent to a cent and a half, gold. For real opium, of fair or good quality, it is quite possible, in China, to pay from ten to twenty times as much. Such dens as this, then, are not only vicious resorts maintained for the purpose of catering to a degrading habit; they are also breeding places of disease and pestilence.
Thus one night’s work made it plain that the foreign concessions were taking no steps that would evidence a spirit of coöperation with the Chinese authorities in their vigorous attempt to check and control the ravages of opium.Tientsin, like Shanghai, did not care.Tientsin, like Shanghai, is sowing the wind in China.
Let us now turn aside for a moment to consider the third important point of contact between the two kinds of civilization—Hongkong.
Hongkong is neither a “settlement” nor a “concession.”It is a British crown colony, with its own government and its own courts.The original property, a mountainous island lying near the mouth of the Canton River, was taken from the Chinese in 1842, as a part of the penalty which China had to pay for losing the Opium War.Later, a strip of the mainland opposite was added to the colony.Hongkong is one of the most important seaports in the world.It is the meeting place for freight and passenger ships from North America, South America, New Zealand and Australia, India, Europe, Africa, and the Philippines and other Pacific islands. It commands the trade of the Canton River Valley, which, though not geographically so imposing as the wonderful valley of the Yangtse, supports, nevertheless, the densely populated region reached by the innumerable canal-like branches of the river. The city of Canton alone, eighty or ninety miles inland from Hongkong, claims 2,500,000 inhabitants. It is safe to say that fifty million Chinamen are constantly under the influence of the civilizing example set by Hongkong.
What is the attitude of the Colonial government towards the opium question?Simply that the opium habit is a legitimate source of revenue.The British gentlemen who administer the government seem never to have been disturbed by doubts as to the morality or humanity of their attitude.Let me quote from the report of the Philippine Commission:
“Farming is the system adopted (renting out the monopoly control of the drug to an individual or a corporation) and a considerable part of the income of the colony is obtained from this source.The habit seems to be spreading.No effort—except the increased price demanded by the farmer to compensate for the increased price he has to pay to secure the monopoly—is made to deter persons from using opium in the colony. Most of the opium comes from India.”
The attitude of the residents and merchants of the colony seems to be expressed plainly enough by an editorial in a leading Hongkong paper which lies before me, dated December 1, 1906: “It will take volumes of imperial edicts to convince us that China ever honestly intends or is ever likely to suppress the opium trade.It is up to China to take the initiative in such a way as to leave no doubt that her intentions are honest and that the native opium trade will be abandoned.Until that is done, it is idle to discuss the question.”
In other words, Hongkong refuses to consider giving up its opium revenue until the Chinese take the market away from it.
I think we may consider the point established that Great Britain is directly responsible for the introduction of opium into China, and, through the ingenuity and persistence of her merchants and her diplomats, for the growth of the habit in that country.To-day, in spite of an unmistakable tendency on the part of the Home government (which we shall consider in a later chapter) to yield to the pressure of the anti-opium agitation in England, the government of India continues to grow and manufacture vast quantities of the drug for the Chinese trade. To-day the representatives of that government at Hongkong are profiting largely from a monopoly control of the opium importation. To-day, at Shanghai, where the British predominate in population, in trade, and in the city government, the opium evil is mishandled in a scandalous manner, and—as elsewhere—for profit. Small wonder, therefore, that other and less scrupulous foreign nations, where they have an opportunity to profit by this vicious traffic, as at Tientsin, hasten to do so.
These three great ports—Shanghai, Tientsin, and Hongkong—are in constant touch commercially with a grand total of very nearly 200,000,000 Chinese.They are, therefore, constantly exerting a direct influence on that number of Chinese minds.As I have pointed out, this influence, because it is concentrated and tangible, is much stronger than the admittedly potent influence of the widely scattered missionaries, physicians, and teachers.From the life and example of the Western nations, as they exist at these ports, the Chinaman is drawing most of his ideas of progress and enlightenment.
In a word, the new China that we shall sooner or later have to deal with among the nations of the world is the new China that the ports are helping to make—for this new China is to-day in process of development. She is struggling heroically to digest and assimilate the Western ideas which alone can bring life and vigour to the sluggish Chinese mass. And yet, turning westward for aid, China is confronted with—Shanghai, Tientsin, and Hongkong. Turning to Britain for a helping hand in her effort to check the inroads of opium, she hears this cheerful doctrine from the one British colony which China can really see and partly understand, Hongkong—“It is up to China.” Dr. Morrison has stated in one of his letters to the Times that Britain’s attitude towards China is one of sympathy, tempered by a lack of information. One very eminent British diplomat with whom I discussed the opium question assured me that that attitude of his government was “most sympathetic.” Later, in London, I found that this same government was quieting an aroused public opinion with assurances that steps were being taken towards an agreement with China in the matter of opium. All this was in the spring and summer of 1907. Six months later, the one British colony in China, and the two great international ports, were cheerfully continuing their cynical policy of sneering at or ignoring the attempts of the Chinese to overcome their master-vice, and were cheerfully profiting by the situation.
It would perhaps seem fanciful to suggest that the great nations should unite to regulate the coast ports.It would appear obvious that such regulation, in so far as it might create a better understanding between the Chinese and the representatives of foreign civilizations with whom they must come in contact, would work to the advantage of commercial interests.Anti-foreign riots are in progress to-day in China which have their roots partly in racial misconception, partly in a long tradition of injustice and bad faith; and it is hardly necessary to suggest that an atmosphere of injustice, bad faith, and rioting is not the best atmosphere in which to carry on trade.But, nevertheless, the inevitable difficulties in the way of drawing the great nations together in the interests of a better understanding with the Chinese people would seem to make such a solution academic rather than practical.
But, still hoping that something may be done about it, something that may lessen the likelihood of the reaping of a whirlwind in China, suppose that we alter the phrase of that Hongkong editorial and state that instead of the problem being up to China, it is distinctly up to Great Britain?Great Britain brought the opium into China.Great Britain kept it there until it took root and spread over the native soil.Great Britain has admitted her guilt, and had pledged herself by a majority vote in Parliament, and by the promises of her governing ministers, to do something about it.Suppose that Great Britain be called upon to make good her pledge?It would be an interesting experiment.All that is necessary is to cut down the production of opium in India, year by year, until it ceases altogether, and with it the exportation into China.This course would solve automatically the opium problem at Hongkong; and it would put it up to the municipal authorities at Shanghai and Tientsin in an interesting fashion.It would in no way jeopardize Britain’s interest in the diplomatic balance of the Far East.It would work for the good rather than the harm of the trade with China. And it would be the first necessary step in the arduous matter of cleaning up the treaty ports and setting a higher example to China.
To this course Great Britain would appear to be committed by the utterances for her government.But the world, like the man from Missouri, has yet to be “shown.”In a later chapter we shall consider this question of promise and performance in the light of Britain’s peculiar governmental problem.
VII
HOW BRITISH CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST
We have seen, in the preceding chapters, that the Anglo-Indian government controls absolutely the production of opium in India, prepares the drug for the market in government-owned and government-operated factories, and sells it at monthly auctions. Let me also recall to the reader that four-fifths of this opium is prepared to suit the known taste of Chinese consumers. The annual value to the Anglo-Indian government of this curious industry, it will be recalled, is well over $20,000,000.
Now we have to consider the last strong defense of this policy which the British government has seen fit to offer to a protesting world, the report of the Royal Commission on Opium.Against this stout defense of the opium traffic in all its branches, we are able to set not only the findings of other governments, such as those of Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, which have opium problems of their own to deal with, but also the curious attitude of a certain British colony, amounting almost to what might be called an opium panic, on that occasion when the Oriental drug found its way near enough home to menace British subjects and British children.
WEIGHING OPIUM IN A GOVERNMENT FACTORY, INDIA
The men who administer the government of India have a chronically difficult job on their hands.In order to keep it on their hands they have got to please the British public; and that is not so easy as it perhaps sounds.It would apparently please both the government and the public if the whole opium question could be thrown after the twenty thousand chests of Canton—into the sea.But the British public is hard-headed, and proud of it; and the spectacle of the magnificent, panoplied government of India gone bankrupt, or so embarrassed as to be calling upon the Home government for aid, would not please it at all.Of the two evils, debauching China or gravely impairing the finances of India, there has been reason to believe that it would prefer debauching China.That, at least, is what successive governments of Britain and of India seem to have concluded.It has seemed wiser to endure a known quantity of abuse for sticking to opium than to risk the cold British scorn for the bankrupt; and, accordingly, the Indian government with the approval of one Home government after another, has stuck to opium. The only alternative course, that of developing a new, healthy source of revenue to supplant opium, the unhealthy, would involve real ideas and an immense amount of trouble; and these two things are only less abhorrent to the administrative mind than political annihilation itself.
But there came a time, not so long ago, when a wave of “anti-opium” feeling swept over England, and the British public suddenly became very hard to please.Parliament agreed that the idea of a government opium monopoly in India was “morally indefensible,” and even went so far as to send out a “Royal Commission” to investigate the whole question.Now this commission, after travelling twenty thousand miles, asking twenty-eight thousand questions, and publishing two thousand pages (double columns, close print) of evidence, arrived at some remarkable conclusions.“Opium,” says the Royal Commission, “is harmful, harmless, or even beneficial, according to the measure and discretion with which it is used....It is [in India] the universal household remedy.... It is extensively administered to infants, and the practice does not appear, to any appreciable extent, injurious.... It does not appear responsible for any disease peculiar to itself.” As to the traffic with China, the Commission states—“Responsibility mainly lies with the Chinese government.” And, finally (which seems to bring out the pith of the matter), “In the present circumstances the revenue derived from opium is indispensable for carrying on with efficiency the government of India.”
To one familiar with this extraordinary summing-up of the evidence, it seems hardly surprising that the Rt.Hon.John Morley, the present Secretary of State for India, should have said in Parliament (May, 1906)—“I do not wish to speak in disparagement of the Commission, but somehow or other its findings have failed to satisfy public opinion in this country and to ease the consciences of those who have taken up the matter.”
The methods employed by a Royal Commission which could arrive at such remarkable conclusions could hardly fail to be interesting.The Government opium traffic was a scandal.Parliament was on record against it. There was simply nothing to be said for opium or for the opium monopoly. It was “morally indefensible”—officially so. It was agreed that the Indian government should be “urged” to cease to grant licenses for the cultivation of the poppy and for the sale of opium in British India. This was interesting—even gratifying. There was but one obstacle in the way of putting an end to the whole business; and that obstacle was, in some inexplicable way, this same British government. The opium monopoly, morally indefensible or not, seemed to be going serenely and steadily on. If the Indian government was urged in the matter, there was no record of it.
Two years passed.Mr. Gladstone, the great prime minister, deplored the opium evil—and took pains not to stop or limit it.Like the House of Peers in the Napoleonic wars, he “did nothing in particular—and did it very well.”So the vigilant crusaders came at the government again.In June, 1893, Mr. Alfred Webb moved a resolution which (so ran the hopes of these crusaders) the most nearly Christian government could not resist or evade.Sure of the anti-opium majority, the new resolution, “having regard to the opinion expressed by the vote of this House on the 10th of April, 1891, that the system by which the Indian opium revenue is raised is morally indefensible,... and recognizing that the people of India ought not to be called upon to bear the cost involved in this change of policy,” demanded that “a Royal Commission should be appointed ... to report as to (1) What retrenchments and reforms can be effected in the military and civil expenditures of India; (2) By what means Indian resources can be best developed; and (3) What, if any, temporary assistance from the British Exchequer would be required in order to meet any deficit of revenue which would be occasioned by the suppression of the opium traffic.”
The crusaders had underestimated the parliamentary skill of Mr. Gladstone.He promptly moved a counter resolution, proposing that “this House press on the Government of India to continue their policy of greatly diminishing the cultivation of the poppy and the production and sale of opium, and demanding a Royal Commission to report as to (1) Whether the growth of the poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be prohibited.... (4) The effect on the finances of India of the prohibition ... taking into consideration (a) the amount of compensation payable; (b) the cost of the necessary preventive measures; (c) the loss of revenue.... (5) The disposition of the people of India in regard to (a) the use of opium for non-medical purposes; (b) their willingness to bear in whole or in part the cost of prohibitive measures.”
Mr. Gladstone’s resolution looked, to the unthinking, like an anti-opium document.He doubtless meant that it should, for in his task of maintaining the opium traffic he had to work through an anti-opium majority.Mr. Webb’s resolution, starting from the assumption that the government was committed to suppressing the traffic, called for a commission merely to arrange the necessary details.Mr. Gladstone’s resolution raised the whole question again, and instructed the commission not only to call particular attention to the cost of prohibition (the shrewd premier knew his public!), not only to find out if the victims of opium in India wished to continue the habit, but also threw the whole burden of cost on the poverty-stricken people of India—which he knew perfectly well they could not bear.The original resolution had sprung out of a moral outcry against the China trade. Mr. Gladstone, in beginning again at the beginning, ignored the China trade and the effects of opium on the Chinese.
But more interesting, if less significant than this attitude, was the suggestion that the Indian government “continue their policy of greatly diminishing the cultivation of the poppy.”Now this suggestion conveyed an impression that was either true or false.Either the Indian government was putting down opium or it was not.In either event, if Mr. Gladstone was not fully informed, it was his own fault, for the machinery of government was in his hands.The best way to straighten out this tangle would seem to be to consult the report of Mr. Gladstone’s commission.This commission, on its arrival in India, found no trace of a policy of suppressing the trade.Sir David Balfour, the head of the Indian Finance Department, said to the commission: “I was not aware that that was the policy of the Home government until the statement was made....The policy has been for some time to sell about the same amount every year, neither diminishing that amount nor increasing it. I should say decidedly, that at present our desire is to obtain the maximum revenue from the opium consumed in India.” As regarded the China trade, Sir David added: “We will not largely increase the cultivation because we shall be attacked if we do so.” And this—“We have adopted a middle course and preserved the status quo with reference to the China trade.”
Mr. Gladstone’s resolution was adopted by 184 votes to 105, the anti-opium crusaders voting against it.And the Royal Commission, with instructions not, as had been intended, to arrange the details of a plan for stopping the opium traffic, but with instructions to consider whether it would pay to stop it, and if not, whether the people of India could be made to stand the loss, started out on its rather hopeless journey.
One thing the crusaders had succeeded in accomplishing—they had forced the government to send a commission to India.They had got one or two of their number on the body.The commission would have to hear the evidence, would be forced to air the situation thoroughly, showing a paternal government not only manufacturing opium for the China trade, but actually, since 1891, manufacturing pills of opium mixed with spices for the children and infants of India. If the Indian government, now at last brought to an accounting, wished to keep the opium business going, they could do two things—they could see that the “right” sort of evidence was given to the commission, and they could try to influence the commission directly. They adopted both courses; though it appears now, to one who goes over the attitude of the majority of the commission and especially of Lord Brassey, the chairman, as shown in the records, that little direct influence was necessary. Lord Brassey and his majority were pro-opium, through and through. The Home government had seen to that.
The problem, then, of the administrators of the Indian government and of this pro-opium commission was to defend a “morally indefensible” condition of affairs in order to maintain the revenue of the Indian government.It was a problem neither easy nor pleasant.
The Viceroy of India was Lord Lansdowne.He went at the problem with shrewdness and determination.His attitude was precisely what one has learned to expect in the viceroys of India.A later viceroy, Lord Curzon, has spoken with infinite scorn of the “opium faddists.” Lord Lansdowne approached the business in the same spirit. He began by sending a telegram from his government to the British Secretary of State for India, which contained the following passage: “We shall be prepared to suggest non-official witnesses, who will give independent evidence, but we cannot undertake to specially search for witnesses who will give evidence against opium. We presume this will be done by the Anti-Opium Society.” This message had been sent in August, 1893, but it was not made public until the 18th of the following November. On November 20th Lord Lansdowne sent a letter to Lord Brassey, “which,” says Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M. P. , in his minority report, “was passed around among the members [of the commission] for perusal. It contained a statement in favour of the existing opium system, and against interference with that system as likely to lead to serious trouble. This appeared to me a departure from the judicial attitude which might have been expected from Her Majesty’s representatives.”
From this Mr. Wilson goes on, in his report, to lay bare the methods of the Indian government in preparing evidence for the commission. To say that these methods show a departure from the expected “judicial attitude” is to speak with great moderation. It is not necessary, I think, to weary the reader with the details of these extended operations. That is not the purpose of this writing. It should be enough to say that Lord Lansdowne and his Indian government ordered that all evidence should be submitted to the commission through their offices; that only pro-opium evidence was submitted; that a government official travelled with the commission and openly worked up the evidence in advance; that the minority members were hindered and hampered in their attempts at real investigation, and were shadowed by detectives when they travelled independently in the opium-producing regions; and, finally, that Lord Brassey abruptly closed the report of the commission without giving the minority members an opportunity to discuss it in detail. The result of these methods was precisely what might have been expected. Opium was declared a mild and harmless stimulant for all ages. No home, in short, was complete without it.
There is an answer to the report of the Royal Commission on opium more telling than can be found in speeches or in minority reports. In an earlier article we examined into the beginnings of opium. We saw how it is grown and manufactured; how it passes out of the hands of the British government into the currents of trade; how it is carried along on these currents—small quantities of it washing up in passing the Straits and the Malay Archipelago—to China; how it blends at the Chinese ports in the flood of the new native-grown opium and divides among the trade currents of that great empire until every province receives its supply of the “foreign dirt.” Now let us follow it farther; for it does not stop there.
The Chinese are great traders and great travellers.The weight of the national misery presses them out into whatever new regions promise a reward for industry.They swarmed over the Pacific to America in a yellow cloud until America, in sheer self-defense, barred them out.They swarmed southward to Australia until Australia closed the doors on them.They swarm to-day into the Philippines and into Malaysia.In the Straits Settlement, in a total population of a little over half a million, more than half (282,000) are Chinese. When America would build the Panama Canal, her first impulse is to import the cheap Chinese labourer, who is always so eager to come. When Britain took over the Transvaal she imported 70,000 Chinese labourers. And where the Chinese travel, opium travels too.
The real answer to the Royal Commission on opium should be found in the attitude of these countries which have had to face the opium problem along with the Chinese problem.Let us include in the list Japan, a country which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short range.What Japan thinks about opium, what Australia and the Transvaal and the United States think, what the Philippines think, is more to the point than any first-hand statements of a magazine reporter.We will take Japan first.Does Japan think that opium is invaluable as a general household remedy?Does Japan think that opium is good for children?
Here is what the Philippine Opium Commission, whose report is accepted to-day as the most authoritative survey of the opium situation, has to say about opium in Japan:
“Japan, which is a non-Christian country, is the only country visited by the committee where the opium question is dealt with in the purely moral and social aspect.... Legislation is enacted without the distraction of commercial motives and interest.... No surer testimony to the reality of the evil effects of opium can be found than the horror with which China’s next-door neighbour views it.... The Japanese to a man fear opium as we fear the cobra or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims. There has been no moment in the nation’s history when the people have wavered in their uncompromising attitude towards the drug and its use, so that an instinctive hatred possesses them. China’s curse has been Japan’s warning, and a warning heeded. An opium user in Japan would be socially a leper.
“The opium law of Japan forbids the importation, the possession, and the use of the drug, except as a medicine; and it is kept to the letter in a population of 47,000,000, of whom perhaps 25,000 are Chinese.So rigid are the provisions of the law that it is sometimes, especially in interior towns, almost impossible to secure opium or its alkaloids in cases of medical necessity....The government is determined to keep the opium habit strictly confined to what they deem to be its legitimate use, which use even, they seem to think, is dangerous enough to require special safeguarding.
“Certain persons are authorized by the head official of each district to manufacture and prepare opium for medicinal purposes....That which is up to the required standard (in quality) is sold to the government: and that which falls short is destroyed.The accepted opium is sealed in proper receptacles and sold to a selected number of wholesale dealers (apothecaries) who in turn provide physicians and retail dealers with the drug for medicinal uses only.It can reach the patient for whose relief it is desired only through the prescription of the attending physician.The records of those who thus use opium in any of its various forms must be preserved for ten years.
“The people not merely obey the law, but they are proud of it; they would not have it altered if they could.It is the law of the government, but it is the law of the people also....Apparently, the vigilance of the police is such that even when opium is successfully smuggled in, it cannot be smoked without detection. The pungent fumes of cooked opium are unmistakable, and betray the user almost inevitably.... There is an instance on record where a couple of Japanese lads in North Formosa experimented with opium just for a lark; and though they were guilty only on this occasion, they were detected, arrested, and punished.”
That is what Japan thinks about opium.
The conclusions of this Philippine Commission formed the basis of the new opium prohibition in the Philippines, which went into effect March 1, 1908.The plan is a modification of the Japanese system of dealing with the evil.
Australia and New Zealand have also been forced to face the opium problem.New Zealand, by an act of 1901, amended in 1903, prohibits the traffic, and makes offenders liable to a penalty not exceeding $2,500 (£500) for each offense.In the Australian Federal Parliament the question was brought to an issue two or three years ago.Petitions bearing 200,000 signatures were presented to the parliament, and in response a law was enacted absolutely prohibiting the importation of opium, except for medicinal uses, after January 1, 1906.All the state governments of Australia lose revenue by this prohibition. The voice of the Australian people was apparently expressed in the Federal Parliament by Hon. V. L. Solomon, who said: “In the cities of the Southern States anybody going to the opium dens would see hundreds of apparently respectable Europeans indulging in this horrible habit. It is a hundredfold more damaging, both physically and morally, than the indulgence in alcoholic liquors.”
That is what Australia and New Zealand think about opium.
The attitude of the United States is thus described by the Philippine Commission: “It is not perhaps generally known that in the only instance where America has made official utterances relative to the use of opium in the East, she has spoken with no uncertain voice.By treaty with China in 1880, and again in 1903, no American bottoms are allowed to carry opium in Chinese waters.This ...is due to a recognition that the use of opium is an evil for which no financial gain can compensate, and which America will not allow her citizens to encourage even passively.”By the terms of this treaty, citizens of the United States are forbidden to “import opium into any of the open ports of China, or transport from one open port to any other open port, or to buy and sell opium in any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition ... extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either power, to foreign vessels employed by them, or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either power and employed by other persons for the transportation of opium.” Thus the United States is flatly on record as forbidding her citizens to engage, in any way whatever, in the Chinese opium traffic.
The last item of expert evidence which I shall present from the countries most deeply concerned in the opium question is from that British colony, the Transvaal.Were the subject less grim, it would be difficult to restrain a smile over this bit of evidence—it is so human, and so humorous.For a century and more, Anglo-Indian officials have been kept busy explaining that opium is a heaven-sent blessing to mankind.It is quite possible that many of them have come to believe the words they have repeated so often.Why not?China was a long way off—and India certainly did need the money.The poor official had to please the sovereign people back home, one way or another. If a choice between evils seemed necessary, was he to blame? We must try not to be too hard on the government official. Perhaps opium was good for children. Keep your blind eye to the telescope and you can imagine anything you like.
WHERE THE CHINAMAN TRAVELS, OPIUM TRAVELS TOO
A Consignment of Opium from China to the United States, Photographed in the Custom House, San Francisco
The situation was given its grimly humorous twist when the monster opium began to invade regions nearer home.It came into the Transvaal after the Boer War, along with those 70,000 Chinese labourers.The result can only be described as an opium panic.I quote, regarding it, from that “Memorandum Concerning Indo-Chinese Opium Trade,” which was prepared for the debate in Parliament during May, 1906:
“The Transvaal offers a striking illustration of the old proverb as to chickens coming home to roost.
“On the 6th of September, 1905, Sir George Farrar moved the adjournment of the Legislative Council at Pretoria, to call attention to ‘the enormous quantity of opium’ finding its way into the Transvaal.He urged that ‘measures should be taken for the immediate stopping of the traffic.’On 6th October, an ordinance was issued, restricting the importation of opium to registered chemists, only, according to regulations to be prescribed by permits by the lieutenant-governor—under a penalty not exceeding £500 ($2,500), or imprisonment not exceeding six months.
“Any person in possession of such substance ...except for medicinal purposes, unless under a permit, is liable to similar penalties.Stringent rights of search are given to police, constables, under certain circumstances, without even the necessity of a written authority.
“The under-secretary for the colonies has also stated, ‘that the Chinese Labour Importation Ordinance, 1904, has been amended to penalize the possession by, and supply to, Chinese labourers of opium.’”
Apparently opium is not good for the children of South Africa.That it would be good (to get still nearer home) for the children and infants of Great Britain, is an idea so monstrous, so horrible, that I hardly dare suggest it.No one, I think, would go so far as to say that the Royal Commission would have reached those same extraordinary conclusions had the problem lain in Great Britain instead of in far-off India and China.Walk about, of a sunny afternoon, in Kensington Gardens. Watch the ruddy, healthy children sailing their boats in the Round Pond, or playing in the long grass where the sheep are nibbling, or running merrily along the well-kept borders of the Serpentine. They are splendid youngsters, these little Britishers. Their skins are tanned, their eyes are clear, their little bodies are compactly knit. Each child has its watchful nurse. What would the mothers say if His Majesty’s Most Excellent Government should undertake the manufacture and distribution of attractive little pills of opium and spices for these children, and should defend its course not only on the ground that “the practice does not appear to any appreciable extent injurious,” but also on the ground that “the revenue obtained is indispensable for carrying on the government with efficiency”?
What would these British mothers say?It is a fair question.The “conservative” pro-opiumist is always ready with an answer to this question.He claims that it is not fair.He maintains that the Oriental is different from the Occidental—racially.Opium, he says, has no such marked effect on the Chinaman as it has on the Englishman, no such marked effect on the Chinese infant as it has on the British infant. I have met this “conservative” pro-opiumist many times on coasting and river steamers and in treaty port hotels. I have been one of a group about a rusty little stove in a German-kept hostelry where this question was thrashed out. Your “conservative” is so cock-sure about it that he grows, in the heat of his argument, almost triumphant. At first I thought that perhaps he might be partially right. One man’s meat is occasionally another man’s poison. The Chinese differ from us in so many ways that possibly they might have a greater capacity to withstand the ravages of opium.
It was partly to answer this question that I went to China. I did not leave China until I had arrived at an answer that seemed convincing. If, in presenting the facts in these columns, the picture I have been painting of China’s problem should verge on the painful, that, I am afraid, will be the fault of the facts. It is a picture of the hugest empire in the whole world, fighting a curse which has all but mastered it, turning for aid, in sheer despair, to the government, that has brought it to the edge of ruin. Strange to say, this British government, as it is to-day constituted, would apparently like to help.But, across the path of assistance stands, like a grotesque, inhuman dragon,—the Indian Revenue.
VIII
THE POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN
An observant correspondent recently wrote from Shanghai to a New York newspaper: “China has missed catching the fire of the West in the manner of Japan, and has lain idle and supine while neighbour and foreigner despoiled her. Her statesmanship has been languid and irresolute, and her armies slow and spiritless in the field. Observers who know China, and are familiar at the same time with the symptoms of opium, say that it is as if the listless symptoms of the drug were to be seen in the very nation itself. Many conclude that the military and political inertia of the Chinese is due to the special prevalence of the opium habit among the two classes of Chinamen directly responsible: both the soldiers and the scholars, among whom all the civil and political posts are held in monopoly, are notoriously addicted to opium.”
The point which these chapters should make clear is that opium is the evil thing which is not only holding China back but is also actually threatening to bring about the most complete demoralization and decadence that any large portion of the world has ever experienced. It is evident, in this day of extended trade interests, that such a paralysis of the hugest and the most industrious of the great races would amount to a world-disaster. Already the United States is suffering from the weakness of the Chinese government in Manchuria, which permits Japan to control in the Manchurian province and to discriminate against American trade. This discrimination would appear to have been one strong reason for the sailing of the battleship fleet to the Pacific. If this relatively small result of China’s weakness and inertia can arouse great nations and can play a part in the moving of great fleets, it is not difficult to imagine the world-importance of a complete breakdown. Every great Western nation has a trade or territorial footing in China to defend and maintain. Every great Western nation is watching the complicated Chinese situation with sleepless eyes. Such a breakdown might quite possibly mean the unconditional surrender of China’s destiny into the hands of Japan; which, with Japan’s growing desire to dominate the Pacific, and with it the world, might quite possibly mean the rapid approach of the great international conflict.
We have seen, in the course of these chapters, that China appears to be almost completely in the grasp of her master-vice.The opium curse in China is a dreadful example of the economic waste of evil.It has not only lowered the vitality, and therefore the efficiency of men, women, and children in all walks of life, but it has also crowded the healthier crops off the land, usurped no small part of the industrial life, turned the balance of trade against China, plunged her into wars, loaded her with indemnity charges, taken away part of her territory, and made her the plundering ground of the nations.She has been compelled to look indolently on while Japan, alight with the fire of progress, has raised her brown head proudly among the peoples of the West.So China has at last been driven to make a desperate stand against the encroachments of the curse which is wrecking her.The fight is on to-day.It is plain that China is sincere; she must be sincere, because her only hope lies in conquering opium.She has turned for help to Great Britain, for Britain’s Indian government developed the opium trade (“for purposes of foreign commerce only”) and continues to-day to pour a flood of the drug into the channels of Chinese trade. Once China thought to crowd out the Indian product by producing the drug herself, as a preliminary to controlling the traffic, but she has never been able to develop a grade of opium that can compete with the brown paste from the Ganges Valley.
This summing up brings us to a consideration of two questions which must be considered sooner or later by the people of the civilized world:
1.Can China hope to conquer the opium curse without the help of Great Britain?
2.What is Great Britain doing to help her?
In attempting to work out the answer to these questions, we must think of them simply as practical problems bearing on the trade, the territorial development, and the military and naval power of the nations.We must try for the present to ignore the mere moral and ethical suggestions which the questions arouse.
First, then: can China, single-handed, possibly succeed in this fight, now going on, against the slow paralysis of opium?
China is not a nation in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word.If we picture to ourselves the countries of Europe, with their different languages and different customs drawn together into a loose confederation under the government of a conquering race, we shall have some small conception of what this Chinese “nation” really is.The peoples of these different European countries are all Caucasians; the different peoples of China are all Mongolians.These Chinese people speak eighteen or twenty “languages,” each divided into almost innumerable dialects and sub-dialects.They are governed by Manchu, or Tartar, conquerors who spring from a different stock, wear different costumes, and speak, among themselves, a language wholly different from any of the eighteen or twenty native tongues.
In making this diversity clear, it is necessary only to cite a few illustrations.There is not even a standard of currency in China.Each province or group of provinces has its own standard tael, differing greatly in value from the tael which may be the basis of value in the next province or group.There is no government coinage whatever.All the mints are privately owned and are run for profit in supplying the local demand for currency, and the basis of this currency is the Mexican dollar, a foreign unit. They make dollar bills in Honan Province. I went into Chili Province and offered some of these Honan bills in exchange for purchases. The merchants merely looked at them and shook their heads. “Tientsin dollar have got?” was the question. So the money of a community or a province is simply a local commodity and has either a lower value or no value elsewhere, for the simple reason that the average Chinaman knows only his local money and will accept no other. The diversity of language is as easily observed as the diversity of coinage. On the wharves at Shanghai you can hear a Canton Chinaman and a Shanghai Chinaman talking together in pidgin English, their only means of communication. When I was travelling in the Northwest, I was accosted in French one day by a Chinese station-agent, on the Shansi Railroad, who frankly said that he was led to speak to me, a foreigner, by the fact that he was a “foreigner” too. With his blue gown and his black pigtail, he looked to me no different from the other natives; but he told me that he found the language and customs of Shansi “difficult,” and that he sometimes grew homesick for his native city in the South.
That the Chinese of different provinces really regard one another as foreigners may be illustrated by the fact that, during the Boxer troubles about Tientsin, it was a common occurrence for the northern soldiers to shoot down indiscriminately with the white men any Cantonese who appeared within rifle-shot.
This diversity, probably a result of the cost and difficulty of travel, is a factor in the immense inertia which hinders all progress in China.People who differ in coinage, language, and customs, who have never been taught to “think imperially” or in terms other than those of the village or city, cannot easily be led into coöperation on a large scale.It is difficult enough, Heaven knows, to effect any real change in the government of an American city or state, or of the nation, let alone effecting any real changes in the habits of men.Witness our own struggle against graft.Witness also the vast struggle against the liquor traffic now going on in a score of our states.Even in this land of ours, which is so new that there has hardly been time to form traditions; which is alert to the value of changes and quick to leap in the direction of progress; which is essentially homogeneous in structure, with but one language, innumerable daily newspapers, and a close network of fast, comfortable railway trains to keep the various communities in touch with the prevailing idea of the moment, how easy do we find it to wipe out race-track gambling, say, or to make our insurance laws really effective, or to check the corrupt practices of corporations, or to establish the principle of local municipal ownership? To put it in still another light, how easy do we find it to bring about a change which the great majority of us agree would be for the better, such as making over the costly, cumbersome express business into a government parcels post?
But there are large money interests which would suffer by such reforms, you say?True; and there are large money interests suffering by the opium reforms in China, relatively as large as any money interests we have in this country.The opium reforms affect the large and the small farmers, the manufacturers, the transportation companies, the bankers, the commission men, the hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers, and the government revenues, for the opium traffic is an almost inextricable strand in the fabric of Chinese commerce. In addition to these bewildering complications of the problem, there is the discouraging inertia to overcome of a land which, far from being alert and active, is sunk in the lethargy of ancient local custom.
No, in putting down her master-vice, China must not only overcome all the familiar economic difficulties that tend to block reform everywhere, but, in addition, must find a way to rouse and energize the most backward and (outside of the age-old grooves of conduct and government) the most unmanageable empire in the world.
On what element in her population must China rely to put this huge reform into effect?On the officials, or mandarins, who carry out the governmental edicts in every province, administer Chinese justice, and control the military and finances.But of these officials, more than ninety per cent.have been known to be opium-smokers, and fully fifty per cent.have been financially interested in the trade.
Still another obstacle blocking reform is the powerful example and widespread influence of the treaty ports.Perhaps the white race is “superior” to the yellow; I shall not dispute that notion here. But one fact which I know personally is that every one of the treaty ports, where the white men rule, including the British crown colony of Hongkong, chose last year to maintain its opium revenue regardless of the protests of the Chinese officials.
Putting down opium in China would appear to be a pretty big job.The “vested interests,” yellow and white, are against a change; the personal habits of the officials themselves work against it; the British keep on pouring in their Indian opium; and by way of a positive force on the affirmative side of the question there would appear to be only the lethargy and impotence of a decadent, chaotic race.How would you like to tackle a problem of this magnitude, as Yuan Shi K’ai and Tong Shao-i have done?Try to organize a campaign in your home town against the bill-board nuisance; against corrupt politics; against drink or cigarettes.Would it be easy to succeed?When you have thought over some of the difficulties that would block you on every hand, multiply them by fifty thousand and then take off your hat to Tong Shao-i and Yuan Shi K’ai.Personally, I think I should prefer undertaking to stamp out drink in Europe. I should know, of course, that it would be rather a difficult business, but still it would be easier than this Chinese proposition.
So much for the difficulties of the problem.Suppose now we take a look at the results of the first year of the fight.There are no exact statistics to be had, but based as it is on personal travel and observation, on reports of travelling officials, merchants, missionaries, and of other journalists who have been in regions which I did not reach, I think my estimate should be fairly accurate.Remember, this is a fight to a finish.If the Chinese government loses, opium will win.
The plan of the government, let me repeat, is briefly as follows: First, the area under poppy cultivation is to be decreased about ten per cent.each year, until that cultivation ceases altogether; and simultaneously the British government is to be requested to decrease the exportation of opium from India ten per cent.each year.Second, all opium dens or places where couches or lamps are supplied for public smoking are to be closed at once under penalty of confiscation.Third, all persons who purchase opium at sale shops are to be registered, and the amount supplied to them to be diminished from month to month. Meantime, the farmer is to be given all possible advice and aid in the matter of substituting some other crop for the poppy; opium cures and hospitals are to be established as widely as possible; and preachers and lecturers are to be sent out to explain the dangers of opium to the illiterate millions.
The central government at Peking started in by giving the high officials six months in which to change their habits.At the end of that period a large number were suspended from office, including Prince Chuau and Prince Jui.
In one opium province, Shansi, we have seen that the enforcement was at the start effective.The evidence, gathered with some difficulty from residents and travellers, from roadside gossip, and from talks with officials, all went to show that the dens in all the leading cities were closed, that the manufacturers of opium and its accessories were going out of business, and that the farmers were beginning to limit their crops.
The enforcements in the adjoining province, Chih-li, in which lies Peking, was also thoroughly effective at the start.The opium dens in all the large cities were closed during the spring, and the restaurants and disorderly houses which had formerly served opium to their customers surrendered their lamps and implements. Throughout the other provinces north of the Yangtse River, while there was evidence of a fairly consistent attempt to enforce the new regulations, the results were not altogether satisfying. Along the central and southern coast, from Shanghai to Canton, the enforcement was effective in about half the important centers of population. In Canton, or Kwangtung Province, the prohibition was practically complete.
The real test of the prohibition movement is to come in the great interior provinces of the South, Yunnan and Kweichou, and in the huge western province of Sze-chuan.It is in these regions that opium has had its strongest grip on the people, and where the financial and agricultural phases of the problems are most acute.All observers recognized that it was unfair to expect immediate and complete prohibition in these regions, where opium-growing is quite as grave a question as opium-smoking.The beginning of the enforcement in Sze-chuan seems to have been cautious but sincere.In this one province the share of the imperial tax on opium alone, over and above local needs, amounts to more than $2,000,000 (gold), and, thanks to the constant demands of the foreign powers for their “indemnity” money, the imperial government is hardly in a position to forego its demands on the provinces. But recognizing that a new revenue must be built up to supplant the old, the three new opium commissioners of Sze-chuan have begun by preparing addresses explaining the evils of opium, and sending out “public orators” to deliver them to the people. They have also used the local newspapers extensively for their educational work; and they have sent out the provincial police to make lists of all opium-smokers, post their names on the outside of their houses, and make certain that they will be debarred from all public employment and from posts of honour. The chief commissioner, Tso, declares that he will clear Chen-tu, the provincial capital, a city of 400,000 inhabitants, of opium within four years; and no one seems to doubt that he will do it as effectively as he has cleared the streets of the beggars for which Chen-tu was formerly notorious. When Mr. J. G. Alexander, of the British Anti-Opium Society, was in Chen-tu last year, this same Commissioner Tso called a mass-meeting for him, at which the native officials and gentry sat on the platform with representatives of the missionary societies, and ten thousand Chinese crowded about to hear Mr. Alexander’s address.
The most disappointing region in the matter of the opium prohibition is the upper Yangtse Valley.In the lower valley, from Nanking down to Soochow and Shanghai (native city), the enforcement ranges from partial to complete.But in the upper valley, from Nanking to Hankow and above, I could not find the slightest evidence of enforcement.At the river ports the dens were running openly, many of them with doors opening directly off the street and with smokers visible on the couches within.The viceroy of the upper Yangtse provinces, Chang-chi-tung, “the Great Viceroy,” has been recognized for a generation as one of China’s most advanced thinkers and reformers.His book, “China’s Only Hope,” has been translated into many languages, and is recognized as the most eloquent analysis of China’s problems ever made by Chinese or Manchu.In it he is flatly on record against opium.Indeed, when governor of Shansi, twenty odd years ago, this same official sent out his soldiers to beat down the poppy crop. Yet it was in this viceroyalty alone, among all the larger subdivisions of China, that there was no evidence whatever last year of an intention to enforce the anti-opium edicts. The only explanation of this state of things seems to be that Chang-chi-tung is now a very old man, and that to a great extent he has lost his vigour and his grip on his work. Whatever the reason, this fact has been used with telling effect in pro-opium arguments in the British Parliament as an illustration of China’s “insincerity.”
The situation seems to sum up about as follows: The prohibition of opium was immediately effective over about one-quarter of China, and partially effective over about two-thirds.This, it has seemed to me, considering the difficulty and immensity of the problem, is an extraordinary record.Every opium den actually closed in China represents a victory.Whether the dens will stay closed, after the first frenzy of reform has passed, or whether the prohibition movement will gain in strength and effectiveness, time alone will tell.But there is an ancient popular saying in China to this effect, “Do not fear to go slowly; fear to stop.”
We have seen, then, that while the Chinese are fighting the opium evil earnestly, and in part effectively, they are still some little way short of conquering it.Also, we must not forget, that all reforms are strongest in their beginnings.The Chinese, no less than the rest of us, will take up a moral issue in a burst of enthusiasm.But human beings cannot continue indefinitely in a bursting condition.Reaction must always follow extraordinary exertion, and it is then that the habits of life regain their ascendency.Remarkable as this reform battle has been in its results, it certainly cannot show a complete, or even a half-complete, victory over the brown drug.And meantime the government of British India is pouring four-fifths of its immense opium production into China by way of Hongkong and the treaty ports.It should be added, further, that while the various self-governing ports, excepting Shanghai, have very recently been forced, one by one, to cover up at least the appearance of evil, the crown colony of Hongkong, which is under the direct rule of Great Britain, is still clinging doggedly to its opium revenues.The whole miserable business was summed up thus in a recent speech in the House of Commons: “The mischief is in China; the money is in India.”
What is Great Britain doing to help China?His Majesty’s government has indulged in a resolution now and then, has expressed diplomatic “sympathy” with its yellow victims, and has even “urged” India in the matter, but is it really doing anything to help?
There are reasons why the world has a right to ask this question.
If China is to grow weaker, she must ultimately submit to conquest by foreign powers.There are nine or ten of these powers which have some sort of a footing in China.No one of them trusts any one of the others, therefore each must be prepared to fight in defense of its own interests.It is not safe to tempt great commercial nations with a prize so rich as China; they might yield.Once this conquest, this “partition,” sets in, there can result nothing but chaos and world-wide trouble.
The trend of events is to-day in the direction of this world-wide trouble.The only apparent way to head it off is to begin strengthening China to a point where she can defend herself against conquest.The first step in this strengthening process is the putting down of opium—there is no other first step. Before you can put down opium, you have got to stop opium production in India. And therefore the Anglo-Indian opium business is not England’s business, but the world’s business. The world is to-day paying the cost of this highly expensive luxury along with China. Every sallow morphine victim on the streets of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York is helping to pay for this government traffic in vice.
But is Great Britain planning to help China?
The government of the British empire is at present in the hands of the Liberal party, which has within it a strong reform element.From the Tory party nothing could be expected; it has always worshipped the Things that Are, and it has always defended the opium traffic.If either party is to work this change, it must be that one which now holds the reins of power.And yet, after generations of fighting against the government opium industry on the part of all the reform organizations in England, after Parliament has twice been driven to vote a resolution condemning the traffic, after generations of statesmen, from Palmerston through Gladstone to John Morley, have held out assurances of a change, after the Chinese government, tired of waiting on England, has begun the struggle, this is the final concession on England’s part:
The British government has agreed to decrease the exportation of Indian opium about eight per cent.per year during a trial period of three years, in order to see whether the cultivation of the poppy and the number of opium-smokers is lessened.Should such be the case, exportation to China will be further decreased gradually.
The reader will observe here some very pretty diplomatic juggling.There is here none of the spirit which animated the United States last year in proposing voluntarily to give up a considerable part of its indemnity money.The British government is yielding to a tremendous popular clamour at home; but nothing more.Could a government offer less by way of carrying out the conviction of a national parliament to the effect that “the methods by which our Indian opium revenues are derived are morally indefensible”?The English people are urging their government, the Chinese are diplomatically putting on pressure, the United States is organizing an international opium commission on the ground that the nations which consume Indian and Chinese opium have, willy-nilly, a finger in the pie. And by way of response to this pressure the British government agrees to lessen very slightly its export for a few years, or until the pressure is removed and the trade can slip back to normal!
There are not even assurances that the agreement will be carried out. While this very agitation has been going on, since these chapters began to appear in Success Magazine, the annual export of Bengal opium has increased (1906-1908) from 96,688 chests to 101,588 chests.And it is well to remember that after Mr. Gladstone, as prime minister, had given assurances of a “great reduction” in the traffic, the officials of India admitted that they had not heard of any such reduction.
A few months ago, the Government issued a “White Paper” containing the correspondence with China on the opium question, so that there is no dependence on hearsay in this arraignment of the British attitude.Let us glance at an excerpt or two from these official British letters.This, for example:
“The Chinese proposal, on the other hand, which involves extinction of the import in nine years, would commit India irrevocably, and in advance of experience, to the complete suppression of an important trade, and goes beyond the underlying condition of the scheme, that restriction of import from abroad, and reduction of production in China, shall be brought pari passu into play.”
Not content with this rather sordid expression, His Majesty’s Government goes on to point out that, under existing treaties, China cannot refuse to admit Indian opium; that China cannot even increase the import duty on Indian opium without the permission of Great Britain; that before Great Britain will consider the question of permanently reducing her production China must prove that the number of her smokers has diminished; that the opium traffic is to be continued at least for another ten years; and then indulges in this superb deliverance:
The proposed limitation of the export to 60,000 chests from 1908 is thought to be a very substantial reduction on this figure, and the view of the Government of India is that such a standard ought to satisfy the Chinese Government for the present.
Even by their own estimate, after taking out the proposed total decrease of 15,300 chests in the Chinese trade, the Indian Government will, during the next three years, unload more than 170,000 chests of opium on a race which it has brought to degradation, which is to-day struggling to overcome demoralization, and which is appealing to England and to the whole civilized world for aid in the unequal contest.
We must try to be fair to the gentlemen-officials who see the situation only in this curious half-light.“It is a practical question,” they say.“The law of trade is the balance-sheet.It is not our fault as individuals that opium, the commodity, was launched out into the channels of trade; but since it is now in those channels, the law of trade must rule, the balance-sheet must balance.Opium means $20,000,000 a year to the Indian Government—we cannot give it up.”
The real question would seem to be whether they can afford to continue receiving this revenue.Opium does not appear to be a very valuable commodity in India itself.Just as in China, it degrades the people.The profits in production, for everybody but the government, are so small that the strong hand of the law has often, nowadays, to be exerted in order to keep the ryots (farmers) at the task of raising the poppy. There are many thoughtful observers of conditions in India who believe it would be highly “practical” to devote the rich soil of the Ganges Valley to crops which have a sound economic value to the world.
But more than this, the opium programme saps India as it saps China.The position of the Englishman in India to-day is by no means so secure that he can afford to indulge in bad government.The spirit of democracy and socialism has already spread through Europe and has entered Asia.In Japan, trade-unions are striking for higher wages.In China and India, are already heard the mutterings of revolution.The British government may yet have to settle up, in India as well as in China, for its opium policy.And when the day for settling up comes, it may perhaps be found that a higher balance-sheet than that which rules the government opium industry may force Great Britain to pay—and pay dear.
Yes, the world has some right to make demands of England in this matter.China can make no real progress in its struggle until the Indian production and exportation are flatly abolished.
The situation has distinctly not grown better since the magazine publication of the first of these chapters, a year ago.If the reader would like to have an idea of where Great Britain stands to-day on the opium business, he can do no better than to read the following excerpts from a speech made last spring by the Hon.Theodore C.Taylor, M.P., on his return from a journey round the world, undertaken for the purpose of personally investigating the opium problem.
First, this:
“We shall not begin to have the slightest right to ask that China should give proof of her genuineness about reform until we show more proof of our own genuineness about reform, and until we suppress the opium traffic where we can.China has taken this difficult reform in hand.She has done much, but not everything.In Shanghai, Hongkong, and the Straits, we have done nothing at all.I want to say this morning, as pricking the bubble of our own Pharisaism, that from the point of view of reform, the blackest opium spots in China are the spots under British rule.”
And then, in conclusion, this:
“I am convinced, and deeply convinced, as every observant and thoughtful man is that knows anything of China, that China is a great coming power. I was talking to a fellow member of the House of Commons who lately went to China, and went into barracks and camps with the Chinese, and who made it his business to study Chinese military affairs, which generally excite so much laughter outside China. He spent a good deal of time with the Chinese soldier. He said to me, as many other people have said to me, ‘The Chinaman is splendid raw material as a soldier, and, if his officers would properly lead the Chinaman, he would follow and make the finest soldier in the world, bar none.’ It will take China a long, long time to organize herself; it will take her a long time to organize her army and navy; it will take a long time to get rid of the system of bribery in China, which is one of the hindrances to putting down the opium traffic; but, depend upon it, the time is coming, not perhaps very soon, but by and by—and nations have long memories—when those who are alive to see the development of China will be very glad that, when China was weak and we were strong, we, of our own motion, without being made to, helped China to get away from this terrible curse.”
Appendix—A Letter from the Field
THE OPIUM CLIMAX IN SHANGHAI
Editor “Success Magazine”:
It is fitting that in the columns of Success, a magazine which has so recently investigated and so thoroughly and ably reported upon the opium curse in China, there should appear the account of a unique ceremony held in the International Settlement of Shanghai, illustrating in a striking manner the general feeling of the Chinese towards the anti-opium movement and setting an example that will make its influence felt in the most remote provinces of the empire.In response to liberal advertising there assembled in the spacious grounds of Chang Su Ho’s Gardens, on the afternoon of Sunday, May 3, 1908, some two or three thousand of Shanghai’s leading Chinese business men, together with a goodly sprinkling of Europeans and Americans, to witness the destruction of the opium-pipes, lamps, etc., taken from the Nan Sun Zin Opium Palace.In America, such a scene as this would have appeared little less than a farce, but here the obvious earnestness of the Chinese, the great value of the property to be destroyed and the deep meaning of this sacrifice, should have been sufficient to put the blush of shame upon the cheeks of the Shanghai voters and councilmen, who, representing the most enlightened nations of the earth, have compromised with the opium evil and permitted three-fourths of this nefarious business to linger in the “Model Settlement” when it has been so summarily dealt with by the native authorities throughout the land.
Within a roped-in, circular enclosure, marked by two large, yellow Dragon-Flags, were stacked the furnishings of the Opium Palace, consisting of opium boxes, pipes, lamps, tables, trays, etc., and as the spectators arrived the work of destruction was going rapidly on.Two native blacksmiths were busily engaged in splitting on an anvil the metal fittings from the pipes, and a brawny coolie, armed with a sledgehammer, was driving flat the artistic opium lamps as they were taken from the tables and placed on the ground before him.Meanwhile the pipes, mellowed and blackened by long use and many of them showing rare workmanship, were dipped into a large tin of kerosine and stacked in two piles on stone bases, to form the funeral pyre, while the center of each stack was filled in with kindling from the opium trays, similarly soaked with oil.On one of the tables within the enclosure were two small trays, each containing a complete smoking outfit and a written sheet of paper announcing that these were the offerings of Mr. Lien Yue Ming, manager of the East Asiatic Dispensary, and Miss Kua Kuei Yen, a singing girl, respectively.Both these quondam smokers sent in their apparatus to be burned, with a pledge that henceforth they would abstain from the use of the drug.
During the preparations for the burning, Mr. Sun Ching Foong, a prominent business man, delivered a powerful exhortation on the opium evil to the enthusiastic multitude and introduced the leading speaker of the afternoon, Mr. Wong Ching Foo, representing the Committee of the Commercial Bazaar. Mr. Wong spoke in the Mandarin language and stated that all of China was looking to Shanghai for a lead in the matter of suppressing opium and that it was with great pleasure the committee had noticed the earnest desire of the foreign Municipal Council (and he was not intending to be sarcastic!)to assist the Chinese in their endeavour to do away entirely with this traffic.It was a very commendable effort, and he was sure the foreigners there would agree that no effort on their part could be too strong to do away with this curse, which was not only undermining the best intellects of China, but by the example of parents was affecting seriously the rising generation.To-day a gentleman, who had been a smoker for twenty-nine years and had realized the great harm it had done him, was present, and had brought with him his opium utensils to be destroyed with those from the opium saloons of French-town.The Nan Sun Zin Opium Palace, from which the pipes and other opium utensils had been brought for destruction, was the largest in Shanghai and, he had heard, the largest in China, patronized by the most notable people.The example of Shanghai was felt in Nanking, Peking, and all over China, for the young men who visited here took with them the report of the pleasures they saw practiced in this settlement and thus gave the natives different ideas.These young men often came here to see the wonderful work accomplished by foreigners, and it was not right that they should take this curse back with them. It had been originally intended to burn also the chairs and tables from the palace, but as this would make too large and dangerous a fire it had been decided to sell these and use the proceeds for the furtherance of the anti-opium movement.
Among the pipes were some for which $500 had been offered, but the Committee of the Commercial Bazaar had purchased the whole outfit to destroy, and they hoped to be able to buy up a good many more of the palaces and thus utterly destroy all traces of the opium-smoking practice.Mr. Wong remarked that China had recently been under a cloud and in Shanghai there had been protracted rains, but to-day it was fine and it was evident that heaven was looking down upon them and blessing their efforts.With heaven’s blessing they would be able to overcome the curse and be even quicker than the Municipal Council in completely wiping out this abominable custom.
As the speeches were concluded, the Chinese Volunteer Band struck up a lively air and amid the deafening din of crackers and bombs a torch was applied to the oil-soaked stacks of pipes which at once burned up fiercely.Extra oil was thrown upon the flames and the glass lamp-covers, bowls, etc., were heaped upon the flames, thus completing a ceremony full of earnestness and meaning.
It has come as a matter of great surprise to many sceptical foreigners that the Chinese should be making such strenuous efforts to do away with the opium-smoking curse.Not a few have thrown cold water upon the scheme, sneered at the Chinese in this endeavour, and doubted both their desire and ability to suppress the sale of opium. The Commercial Bazaar Committee, consisting of well-known Chinese business men, is not only seconding the Municipal Council in its gradual withdrawal of licenses in the foreign settlements but has also accomplished the closing of many opium dens through its own efforts by bringing pressure to bear upon the owners of the dens. Already, many private individuals have given up their beloved pipes and some dens have voluntarily closed. It has also been agreed by the Chinese concerned that all of the shops run by women are to cease the sale of opium. This activity on the part of the Chinese themselves is a striking rebuke to those who cast suspicion upon the honesty of purpose of both the Chinese government and people, refusing to immediately abolish the opium licenses in the foreign settlements of Shanghai, despite the appeals from the American, British, and Japanese governments, the petitions of the leading Chinese of the place and the general popularity of the anti-opium movement. Yielding to great pressure from all sides, the Shanghai Municipal Council did consent to introduce a resolution upon this question before the Ratepayers Meeting to be held March 20th, but the concession made was small indeed compared with what was generally desired or what might be anticipated from the leading lights of “civilized and highly moral” nations. The resolution was as follows:—
“Resolution VI. That the number of licensed opium houses be reduced by one-quarter from July 1, 1908, or from such other early date and in such manner as may appear advisable to the Council for 1908-1909.”
While there was in this a definite reduction of one-fourth of the opium-joints in the settlement, there was nothing definite as to any future policy, though the implication was that the houses would be all closed within a period of two years.In his speech introducing this resolution before the ratepayers, the British chairman of the council said, among other things, “I feel sure that every one of us has the greatest sympathy with the Chinese nation in its effort to dissipate the opium habit, but we are not unfamiliar with Chinese official procedure, and how far short actual administrative results fall when compared with the official pronouncements that precede them.It is impossible not to be sceptical as to the intentions of the Chinese government with regard to this matter, although on this occasion we quite recognize that many officials are sincere in their desire to eradicate the opium evil, and I am sure there is every intention on the part of this community to assist them.Yet we know of no programme that they have drawn up to make this great reform possible, if indeed they have a programme....The absence of these, so to speak, first business essentials, on the part of the Chinese government, was among the reasons which led us to the view that the settlement was called upon to do little more than continue its work of supervision over opium licenses, and wait for the cessation of supplies of the drug to render that supervision unnecessary....The advice we have received from the British Government is, in brief, that we should do more than keep pace with the native authorities, we should be in advance of them and where possible encourage them to follow us.”
In the following quotations from a letter written by Dr. DuBose, of Soochow, President of the Anti-Opium League, to the municipal council, the attitude of the reformers is clearly shown.
“The prohibition of opium-smoking is the greatest reformation the world has ever seen, and its benefits are already patent.Let the ratepayers effectually second the efforts being made by the Chinese government to abolish the use of opium throughout the empire.
“It has proved a peaceful reformation.In the cities and towns about one-half million dens, at the expiration of six months, were closed promptly without resistance or complaint.The government will grant all the necessary privileges of inspection to the municipal police in the prevention of illicit smoking.
“The consumption of opium in the cities has fallen off thirty per cent.; in the towns fifty per cent.; while in the rural districts in the eastern and middle provinces it is reduced to a minimum.It is well for Shanghai to be allied with Soochow, Hangchow, and Nanking, and not to permit itself to be a refuge for bad men.
“The Chinese merchants in the International Settlement have sent in earnest appeals to the Council on this question.As friends of China, might not the ratepayers give their appeals a courteous consideration?
“The question of opium at the Annual Meeting commands world-wide attention and Saturday’s papers throughout Christendom will bear record of and comment upon the action.
“To close the dens is right. Shanghai cannot afford to be the black spot on Kiangsu’s map. Opium delendum est.
“In behalf of the Anti-Opium League,
“Hampden C.DuBose, President.”
The appeals from Great Britain, America, China, and Japan, like the petitions of merchants, missionaries, and officials, were without effect. The “vested interests” carried the day, and a resolution, ordering the closing of the dens on or before the end of December, 1909, was lost by a vote of 128 to 189, the council, as usual, influencing and controlling the votes and carrying the original motion—the only concession it would grant to this gigantic movement.
Another surprise came to the cynical foreigner, when, on April 18th, the whole of the opium licensees participated in a public drawing in the town hall, to decide by lottery which establishments should be shut down on the 1st of July, numbering one-fourth of the total number, this method being adopted by the council to avoid any suspicion of partiality in the selection.The keepers of the dens cheerfully acquiesced in the proposal, the sporting chance no doubt appealing to the gambling spirit for which they are noted, and in the town hall this remarkable drawing was held without any sign of disfavour or rowdyism.The keepers of the Shanghai opium shops are no doubt thoroughly convinced that the feeling of the native community is entirely against the retention of these places and are ready to bow to the inevitable. None of the trouble or rioting feared by the Council, materialized, and it is certain that the entire list of licenses might have been immediately revoked without disturbance of any kind—and without protest. Three hundred and fifty-nine licenses thus cease with the end of June, and it is doubtful, with the present spirit manifest in the Chinese, that such another drawing will be necessary at all. The funeral pyre of opium-pipes, we trust, marks the end, or the immediate beginning of the end, of Shanghai’s reproach, and it is distinctly to the credit of the 500,000 Chinese living within the jurisdiction of this foreign community, that they themselves are taking the lead in wiping out this stain on the “Model Settlement”—doing what the foreigner dared not and the “vested interest” would not do.
Charles F.Gammon.
MISSIONARY—TRAVELS
The Call of Korea
Illustrated, net, 75c. H.G.UNDERWOOD
“Dr. Underwood knows Korea, its territory, its people, and its needs, and his book has the special value that attaches to expert judgment.The volume is packed with information, but it is written in so agreeable a style that it is as attractive as a novel, and particularly well suited to serve as a guide to our young people in their study of missions.”—The Examiner.
Things Korean A Collection of Sketches and Anecdotes, Diplomatic and Missionary.
Illustrated, net, $1.25. HORACE N.ALLEN
Gathered from a twenty years’ residence in Korea and neighboring countries by the late Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Korea.
Breaking Down Chinese Walls From a Doctor’s Viewpoint.
Illustrated, net, $1.00. ELLIOTT I.OSGOOD
“Dr. Osgood was for eight years a physician at Chu Cheo, and conducted a hospital and dispensary, visiting and preaching the Gospel in the villages round about.He writes from experience.The object is to show the influence and power of the medical missionary service, and of the daily lives of the missionaries upon the natives, told in a most interesting manner by the record of the living examples.”—United Presbyterian.
Present-Day Conditions in China
Boards, net, 50c. MARSHALL BROOMHALL
“This book is very impressive to those who do know something of “present-day conditions in China,” and most startling to those who do not.Maps, tables and letterpress combine to give a marvelous presentation of facts.”—Eugene Stock, Church Missionary Society.
The New Horoscope of Missions
Net, $1.00. JAMES S.DENNIS
“Dr. Dennis, who has long been a close student of foreign missions, and speaks with authority, gives in this volume a broad general view of the present aspects of the missionary situation, as foundation for ‘the new horoscope’ which he aims to give.The book is made up of lectures delivered at the McCormick Theological Seminary on The John H.Converse Foundation.”—Examiner.
The Kingdom in India
With Introductory Biographical Sketch by Henry N.Cobb, D.D.
Net, $1.50. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN
“This volume is Mr. Chamberlain’s own account of what he did, saw and felt. As a teacher, a preacher and a medical missionary, Dr. Chamberlain stood in the front ranks. If all who are abroad could have the ability, the training, and the heart interest in the redemption of the endarkened lands that Mr. Chamberlain’s life reveals, and the support for carrying on the gospel were adequately furnished, the future would be radiant with hope.” —Religious Telescope.
The History of Protestant Missions in India
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The author of this book is the authority in Germany on missionary subjects.This, his latest work, has proven so valuable as to demand this translation into English.India is a vast field and the missionary operations there are carried on by many societies.This survey of the field is broad and accurate, it reaches every part of the work and every society in the field, and gives a splendid summary of what has actually been accomplished.It has the unqualified approbation of the workers on the field themselves.
Overweights of Joy A Story of Mission Work in Southern India.
Net, $1.00. AMY WILSON CARMICHAEL
Mission-loving men and women, if you would know India, and the glorious uphill fighting of its missionaries, you must read this book, hot with actual experiences, and learn the truth.
“A priceless contribution to Missionary literature.”—Illustrated Missionary News.
Bishop Hannington and The Story of the Uganda Mission
Illustrated, net, $1.00. W.GRINTON BERRY
The personality of Bishop Hannington was full of color and vigor, and the story of his work, particularly of his adventures in East Africa, ending with his martyrdom on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, is one of the most fascinating in missionary annals.Hannington was himself a picturesque writer, with a noteworthy gift of producing dashing and humorous descriptive sketches, and quite a third of the present volume consists of Hannington’s own narratives.
Transcriber’s Notes:
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